


Coin Toss

by kayjaylew



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:41:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23832568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayjaylew/pseuds/kayjaylew
Summary: "It was a complicated feeling, Ethari had come to discover, being grateful to fate for bringing home one cherished member of his family, all while still feeling the hollowness of another’s continued absence.Was he permitted to mourn his husband while Rayla is celebrating being restored as a fully-fledged member of the Silvergrove? Is he allowed to grieve while he should be celebrating as Rayla introduces her young human friend (boyfriend, he must remember,) bringing along with them a sign for potential peace between Xadia and the human lands?Was he expected to move on without any real closure or finality to Runann’s death? It was still too early to feel like he wouldn’t be an unfaithful husband by once again parading around as a single, unmarried man, Ethari mused as he pounded the steel on his forge."Or, in the aftermath of season 3, our heroes move on and try and tie up their loose ends. However, with Claudia on the run and Aaravos still at large, making those knots might not be as straightforward as "moving on."
Relationships: Aaravos & Runaan (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos & Viren (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Ethari/Runaan (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Coin Toss

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read, but hopefully my love for this series will make up for it! Enjoy chapter 1!

It was a complicated feeling, Ethari had come to discover, being grateful to fate for bringing home one cherished member of his family, all while still feeling the hollowness of another’s continued absence. 

Was he permitted to mourn his husband while Rayla is celebrating being restored as a fully-fledged member of the Silvergrove? Is he allowed to grieve while he should be celebrating as Rayla introduces her young human friend _(boyfriend, he must remember,_ ) bringing along with them a sign for potential peace between Xadia and the human lands?

Was he expected to move on without any real closure or finality to Runann’s death? It was still too early to feel like he wouldn’t be an unfaithful husband by once again parading around as a single, unmarried man, Ethari mused as he pounded the steel on his forge. 

If the fire was a little too hot for comfort, and if his hammering was a bit too strong for the metal he was working with, no one in the Silvergrove was acknowledging it, and Ethari certainly was too distracted to much care.

* * *

Claudia was running out of time. More importantly, she was running out of ingredients. Viren was fading fast, and she had stretched out her resources too thin.

Worriedly, she glanced up at the shining cocoon in the corner of the cave (was it glowing even brighter than an hour ago?) before returning to her previous task of using up her last Xadian leaf for yet another skin-binding remedy for her father’s shoulder. While she had been able to restore his life, Claudia was still under the confines of the reality that Viren’s soul would not last in a grievously wounded body. He himself was certainly no help between his bouts of consciousness.

Her best hope was getting back to human territory and finding a doctor, quickly.

Claudia knew that she was running out of options, and without Soren to calm her down with his quips she could feel herself starting to panic, which wasn’t good because panic makes people sloppy. _And,_ Claudia grimaced to herself, _You don’t want to get sloppy when dealing with Dark Magic._ She haphazardly tore her father’s tunic for better access to the large gash across his shoulder still leaking fluid she hoped wasn’t important. With the ripping of the fabric, a small coin pouch jingled as it hit the floor.

 _Lucky_ , Claudia thought, that she would be able to pay the doctors for their services rather than the less-appealing alternative of bluffing her way through treatment while she was short on any actual way to magically convince them that _“No Doctor, you don’t require payment for your services! In fact, wouldn’t we be much better off as a society with a trade and barter system?”_

Two or three coins rolled out of the pouch. With Viren stable for the moment, Claudia shuffled over to the coins to return them to the bag.

With the bronze pieces reflecting the light from the strange cocoon, she picked up the first coin.

And then paused as she looked more closely at the figures trapped inside.

Oh.

This whole “bargaining” thing might be easier than she thought.

* * *

**40 Years before the Present**

_The Silvergrove was alight in celebration. For the first time in over 60 years, visitors from their sister villages were coming to mingle and establish connections in honor of King_ _Avizandum and Queen Zubeia’s egg coming into existence._

_As a young, newly-minted smithy, Ethari, in particular, was looking forward to meeting the neighboring Willowshire warriors in the crowd, as he was hoping to gain insight into their metalwork. He had been hoping to meet up with Tiadrin and Lain during the festivities, but they had been assigned as escorts for the attending council members._

_That was another reason for the festivities - the Silvergrove was hoping to prove to the council that they, too, were capable of stationing and providing for potential warriors and assassin trainees. Up until several years ago, Willowshire had been the primary location of the training facilities as it was the largest settlement of moonshadow elves. Now, with the Silvergrove expanding at an exponential rate nearly triple the other settlements, there had been surfacing discussions of relocating a few of those facilities._

_However, Ethari had never been especially interested in politics, so he largely ignored any and all conversation regarding the “who-was-who” aspect of the festivities._

_He was a simple man, who simply wanted to strike up a conversation with a fellow smith._

* * *

**Present day**

Rayla was spectacularly annoyed.

She had been waiting nearly four hours for a simple audience with Kirym, the records keeper, only to find out that she wouldn’t be back until moonrise at the very least. Not to mention the only reason she had gained this information was because Rayla had happened to snoop around the large, circular counter that took up the majority of the main room in the records tower and saw a small scribbled note with “be back in the evening” stuck to the floating enchanted records crystal that was certainly meant to be more than a glorified bulletin. 

All Rayla had wanted to do that afternoon was register the two scruffy humans that had been tagging alongside her as temporary residents of the Silvergrove and as members of her household. The two humans in question were dancing around somewhere likely bothering the guild members or frontline soldiers for training competitions, or off in the hills somewhere with either a book or a stick of charcoal and paper. While normally this behavior would be endearing ( _It would have to be_ , Rayla mused, as she had placed a rather large emotional investment into one of them.) However, her patience had completely worn thin today, what with her corralling Callum and Soren around for most of the day and pushing Ethari into taking a rest from the forge the other half, she had been hoping for at least one thing to go her way.

Steeling herself for a possibly horribly awkward social encounter, Rayla started to head towards the assassin barracks to find Soren and make sure he wasn’t offending anyone enough to get him killed, while also avoiding anyone who had ghosted her previously - that is to say, just about everyone else in the village.

* * *

Soren wasn’t especially used to not getting his way. As previous captain of the king’s guard, son of the high mage, and the most attractive man in the general area, he was generally accustomed to his orders being followed.

The moonshadow elves in the warrior’s square didn’t seem to be getting the memo. Soren had walked up to just about every sword-wielding, bow-carrying, knife-holding individual he could see, and almost every elf had immediately rebuffed his challenge to practice dueling with him.

Well, almost everyone.

A tall lady named Vira - apparently a strongarm soldier - had humored him and agreed to practice with him. “It should be an interesting workout,” She had smirked, “if a bit quick.” Naturally, none of the other soldiers or assassins in the area seemed to agree - or even look in his direction, which he mostly understood, what with the lifelong grudge between humans and Xadians and all - but a few had seemed interested in watching. The plan was to meet at a clearing near the forges, but it seemed like maybe a Xadian hour was longer than a human hour, because it was way past sundown and there weren’t any signs of anyone approaching.

Until finally, he could make out the long, white braids and tall horns that he remembered Vira having emerge from the distance. Accompanying her were a few other elves in both warrior’s garb and civilian clothes. 

“I hadn’t realized you needed backup to fight me! If I had known I would have brought a smaller sword!”

Vira let out a loud laugh. “Don’t worry young one, if your sword is too small, feel free to borrow one of my own.” She roughly dropped the large pack she had been carrying - one of the other elves wincing at the impact - and after picking up a scabbard from the resulting pile, tossed one over in Soren’s direction. “Your human sword is nothing but a handicap to you here; Ethari forges the finest metals in Xadia and if you want to get far into this fight, you’ll need one of these.”

* * *

Callum had been drawing just outside the village boundaries when excited shouting disrupted his peace.

Still a little wary of surprised shoutings, he figured that he’d might as well check everything out and see what was going on. What he certainly didn’t expect to see was Soren flying across a makeshift training ring and a towering elf shaking with laughter.

Callum could see Soren spit blood out of his mouth before scrambling back to his feet.

“Again!”

Soren charged his opponent - a female elf with dark skin and long, pale hair - and swung a sword resembling Rayla’s old blades. The result was largely the same, with the elf swiftly maneuvering out of the blade’s range and sweeping Soren’s feet out from underneath him.

Soren was clearly used to this treatment at this point, as could be seen by the evidence of dirt and grass coating the clothing that had been gifted to him by Rayla.

It wasn’t long into the next round of admittedly one-sided sparring that Rayla came charging into the fray.

“Soren!” she shouted, annoyed, “Have you been here this entire time?”

Soren got up, groaning as he stretched his back. “Well, for most of the day, yeah. You told me to stop being annoying and to find something to do so I did. Find something to do, that is.” Rayla huffed. “When I asked you to stop being annoying, I _didn’t mean_ to go be annoying somewhere else! I - ah!” Rayla started slightly as she registered the woman standing next to her. “Vira! I’m glad to run into you! I was looking for Kirym but I saw she was away from the records tower. Is she with you?” Vira eyed Rayla and smiled good-naturedly. “She isn’t with me, no, but I’m sure you know how she is - running around with everything and nothing on her mind. Do you need her urgently?” Shuffling slightly, the smaller elf folded her arms in what Callum could tell was nervousness. “Well, not… exactly, but I was hoping to get, um, that is, I was hoping to register these two officially under my household name so they don’t have to use my key if they want to um, come by in the future. When all of this is over, I mean.” 

_She doesn’t want to be stranded in the event one of us is ghosted,_ Callum realized belatedly.

Rayla’s ghosting was still a very sore spot for her, the young mage knew. Unfortunately, it hadn’t especially been addressed, what with Ethari’s distraction and Rayla’s unwillingness to confront the village leaders about it. _“It’s only asking for more dramatics,”_ she had insisted. _“It’s nothing worth worrying ourselves over.”_

Vira hummed. “I understand,” she said. “I’ll be sure to run the message by her.” She turned to Soren. “Let’s put this training session on hold, shall we?” Soren grumbled a bit, but nodded, eyes shining with excitement. He noticed Callum standing on the outskirts of the ring with some other bystanding elves, and waved him over. “Little Prince!” Callum shrunk in on himself with embarrassment. “Dude, that’s worse than ‘step-prince.’” Soren rolled his eyes and seemed to swat away the thought with his hand and place his arm roughly around Callum’s shoulders. “Whatever dude. Let’s get back to the house before your awkwardness rubs off on my awesome skills.”

“As much as I hate to agree with this oaf,” Rayla shouldered in, “we should be getting back. It’s getting to be late and I don’t want Ethari to be alo-” A large rumble throughout the ground cut her off, coupled with what sounded like a distant _boom_. 

Rayla, Soren, and the other armed elves close by tensed and slowly drew their weapons. Another _boom_ , louder and closer this time, and Vira held her arm up, signaling to the other elves to hold their position. After several seconds that seemed like hours, another crash sounded. As the elves in the crowd looked through the village border, they could see what looked like a large, glowing black mass growing closer, and with it, large crashes and booms as it flew into the large trees and forced its way through, knocking over several in the process. “What is that hideous thing?” Vira hissed.

Suddenly, the mass stopped in its tracks. It pulsated twice, until finally settling down right before the border. After a few moments, the glowing dissipated, revealing a figure with torn robes and hair with more white than they had previously seen the figure possessing.

“I know you’re here Soren,” Claudia shouted from where she stood, “and I’ll tear this entire forest down if that’s what it takes for you to show yourself!”

**Author's Note:**

> I realize that not everyone loves OCs, but I figure that when writing about an entire village, some new characters will probably come into play!  
> In terms of world building, I headcanon that while elves have a similar concept of time as humans do, they live probably around 60-90 years longer, with their average lifespan being around 175. This means that they do mature at a similar rate to humans, but once they hit around the age of 30 their aging slows down. In other words, their age of 120 is the equivalent to the human maturation age of 60. This isn’t especially important to the story, but I think it helps my timeline a bit. I wanted to address the fact that Runaan and Ethari still seem to be in their late 20s while Runaan still somehow  
> has around 20 years of assassin experience.  
> I also headcanon that similarly, Zym was in his egg and incubating for around 40 years. I think that if left to nature, he would have stayed in his egg for around 50-60 years, but due to the emergency he’s essentially the equivalent of a preemie baby. It might also explain why it seemed like up until King Harrow and co., there was a kind of baited peace, which would have been due to the Dragon King remaining on the defensive and staying close to his nest.  
> I think Zym looks exceptionally small for a baby storm dragon in the show, so this is my way of addressing it!
> 
> Thank you again for reading! The update schedule might not be consistent for a while until I figure out my writing groove, but everything is all planned-out and ready to be written about. Please leave a comment or a kudos! It helps me gauge the interest in this fic and motivates me when I write!


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